1. Technical Field
This invention relates to the distribution of digital media items to mobile phones and other mobile devices. In an important application of the present invention, the digital media items take the form of advertisements, but they might also take the form of music recordings, pictures, videos, other types of content or combinations of any of these.
2. Description of Related Art
Taking the example of mobile phones which use a cellular network, advertisements have been directed to mobile phones utilising multi-media messaging (MMS). An example of this is seen in international patent application WO 02/103968. However, with typical, current costings for mobile telephony, it is expensive for an advertiser to send MMS adverts to a large number of recipients. Moreover, cellular technology does not lend itself readily to the targeting of advertisements to certain groups of people or to people at a certain location. The cost to a user of forwarding an MMS message using their mobile phone means that cellular telephone networks are not a suitable platform for forms of marketing such as viral marketing which require users to forward digital adverts to other users.
The most advanced cellular phones available today are able to communicate using the existing cellular network and also using other networks—examples include WiFi networks and Bluetooth. Bluetooth enables mobile devices to communicate directly with one another over a short-range. The Wi-Fi standards (IEEE 802.11 series) allow Wi-Fi devices to operate in infrastructure mode which requires the presence of an access point, or other fixed infrastructure, or alternatively in ad-hoc mode which enables two or more Wi-Fi devices to communicate with one another directly without using fixed infrastructure. ‘Ad-hoc wireless network’ as used herein refers to a wireless network which does not require fixed infrastructure and thus includes, for example, Wi-Fi networks operating in ad-hoc mode, Bluetooth, Ultra-WideBand networks, and networks set-up by games consoles such as the Nintendo DS or Sony's Play Station Portable. In addition to cellular phones often being able to communicate using an ad-hoc network (often Bluetooth) in addition to a cellular network, other devices are also capable of using both a cellular network and an ad-hoc wireless network. Examples include laptops having cards providing them with 3G connectivity.